On the existence of God

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Klax

Time has no beginning.

Time did have a beginning, and if you choose to believe in a multiverse, even it had a beginning, according to Ethan Siegel.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@Dale

@Klax

Time has no beginning.

Time did have a beginning, and if you choose to believe in a multiverse, even it had a beginning, according to Ethan Siegel.

According to rationality that would mean there are infinite multiverses from eternity.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Klax

According to rationality that would mean there are infinite multiverses from eternity.

Not so. Only to eternity.
 

be·gin·ning

/bəˈɡiniNG/
noun

1. the point in time or space at which something starts.

“he left at the beginning of February”

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@Dale

@Klax

According to rationality that would mean there are infinite multiverses from eternity.

Not so. Only to eternity.

Nonsense. Nature has always existed. And I’d like a reference to him saying that please.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Wherever inflation occurs (blue cubes), it gives rise to exponentially more regions of space with each step forward in time. Even if there are many cubes where inflation ends (red Xs), there are far more regions where inflation will continue on into the future. The fact that this never comes to an end is what makes inflation ‘eternal’ once it begins, and where our modern notion of a multiverse comes from.

Ethan Siegel

Why Do Physicists Say A Multiverse Has To Exist?

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Klax

multiverses from eternity.

@Klax

Nature has always existed.

You may believe that, if you like. I choose to believe otherwise:
 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

After many pages I couldn’t get to the multiverse. I will later. Regardless, if he’s right, so am I.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@Dale

@Klax

multiverses from eternity.

@Klax

Nature has always existed.

You may believe that, if you like. I choose to believe otherwise:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I don’t believe, like you, I know. No choice involved.

[Laura]

Dale and Klax, please either give it a rest or start a new topic if there’s something else you want to discuss.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Even though we can trace our cosmic history all the way back to the earliest stages of the hot Big Bang, that isn’t enough to answer the question of how (or if) time began. Going even earlier, to the end-stages of cosmic inflation, we can learn how the Big Bang was set up and began, but we have no observable information about what occurred prior to that. The final fraction-of-a-second of inflation is where our knowledge ends.

Thousands of years after we laid out the three major possibilities for how time began — as having always existed, as having begun a finite duration ago in the past, or as being a cyclical entity — we are no closer to a definitive answer. Whether time is finite, infinite, or cyclical is not a question that we have enough information within our observable Universe to answer. Unless we figure out a new way to gain information about this deep, existential question, the answer may forever be beyond the limits of what is knowable.

Ethan Siegel

Did Time Have A Beginning?

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

I confirm what Ethan Siegel explains.

Science and objective evidence only exists because of the space-time mathematical laws of nature. But these laws are part of the very geometric structure of the universe which came into existence 13.8 billion years ago. Therefore, we have no objective evidence of anything prior to this either temporally or causally. And thus atheists are on a completely level playing field in their speculations about a multiverse with the theists in their belief in a God who created this universe. We have no objective means for a determination on such questions and all claims on this matter are of a completely subjective nature.

When we think about the birth of the Universe, was time already in place?

The understanding of the space-time structure of the universe in General Relativity gives us no reason whatsoever to think that this is so.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Some of us aborigines accept legitimate testimony. In the beginning God.
 

An analogy is a three-legged horse, but try this:

An aborigine who, let’s say, has had no contact with moderns until he is given a demonstration of a functioning piece of 21st century technology, maybe a smartphone. He then later, without the device, tries to explain what it does to a fellow tribesman. His mate then pooh-poohs the description, calling it impossible and meaningless, saying it is irrational, and then demanding that his reasoning is flawless. God’s ‘technology’ and relationships with time and space and material are likewise beyond our ken.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

God changes not. And if He is not, nature alone does not.

I too confirm what Ethan Siegel says:

‘That’s what the multiverse is, and why scientists accept its existence as the default position.’.

‘This doesn’t mean that different Universes have different rules or laws or fundamental constants, or that all the possible quantum outcomes you can imagine occur in some other pocket of the multiverse.’

‘You may not like it, and you really may not like how some physicists abuse the idea, but until a better, viable alternative to inflation comes around, the multiverse is very much here to stay. Now, at least, you understand why.’

or not as the case may be.

All of which is irrelevant to rationality. Eternity is a fact. In God or not. Anything else is wooden literalism.

Inflation instantiates universes from the pre-true vacuum state and extends beyond them, it always has.
There have always been universes coming in to being with inflation.
Inflation bubbles extending beyond universes constitute the units of the infinite, eternal multiverse.

There is no rational, meaningful, viable alternative, never will be, which is why God conforms to it, and no belief in a once-upon-a-time ‘testimony’ that denies that is rational.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

OK. Apart from Dale, who else believes in the beginning of nature, of the multiverse, and why please? Anyone? Is it mandatory for faith in God in Christ to believe it? What do I lack in faith by knowing that nature is eternal?

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

I’m inclined to think as you do that there is a larger natural cycle which accounts for the expansion we observe of everything and of the singularity which is thought to be its source.

But we are talking about something so vast and ancient that I am loath to claim it as a fact. I do believe it is reasonable to disagree about this and I think putting it as strongly as you do is not warranted.

But I scoff at those who claim atheists desperately need to believe in the multiverse. No one urgently requires a theory of cosmic origins. We tend to look for natural causes because we have no investment in believing in anything supernatural as a cause of anything. Frankly I think theology would be better off to drop investments in anything empirical. But of course the resurrection makes that hill one you’ve got to die on. An afterlife would be another example but I’m pretty sure there are more claiming Christians who are willing to doubt heaven an hell than there are who doubt the resurrection of Jesus.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@MarkD

I think putting it as strongly as you do is not warranted.

Thank you.  

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

@MarkD

I think putting it as strongly as you do is not warranted.

How strongly should it be put? How weakly? As strongly-weakly as Siegel?

We are talking of something bigger than vast and older than ancient. Infinite. Eternal. There is no meaningful alternative whatsoever. How does one rationally dilute, diminish that warrant? With what? It cannot be put less strongly than strongest. The effectively timeless multiverse is the least complex. You seem to be of the school of postmodernists, Mark, for whom eternity is just a word?

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

To my mind it is best to identify it as an area where people are known to disagree and conclusive evidence is unobtainable - for either opinion. My opinion aligns with yours but I don’t see why everyone else should agree. I think it is important not to waste our credibility overstating the case for what really is just our opinion, no matter how reasonable it seems to us.

Edited to say I don’t think I have the faith in reason that you do @Klax. It seems to me to be a fairly limited faculty. Reason, philosophizing and theologizing (?) are known to travel by multiple paths to end up at a variety destinations so there is little chance that telling someone who disagrees with you that you -unlike they- are employing rational reason isn’t likely to win many converts.

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

Aye Mark. Not all opinions are equal though. It’s not a flat playing field. And there are at least two different playing fields for different games. Reason comes way before theology for sure and it’s the bedrock of philosophy, there is none without it, whereas there is much, dominant religion without it. As you, I and Dale demonstrate, nobody ever changes their mind. Minds change nonetheless. It’s not about making converts, it’s about making the case clear. The case for the multiverse couldn’t be clearer to the limited faculty of reason of brilliant minds like Siegel’s and Alan Guth’s. This site needs that as part of its ecology if it is to have any intellectual integrity in faith; credibility. You’re a liberal arts man Mark. So you don’t extrapolate rationally from science [game b, snooker], but from the humanities [game a, yacht racing]. God is fair, what He gives on the one hand He takes away with the other on either side of The Two [playing field] Cultures.